Susannah Hoffs teaches us about professionalism

So I'm in Melbourne at the moment - hence anyone who thought my brain had overloaded from too many paragraph related constructs. It's funny though how life continues to turn and turn in ever decreasing circles - I'm back in the same dodgy Internet cafe with the same dodgy piles of boxes marked "box" which could contain anything but allegedly contain water. I am over to see the Bangles and am pleased to say that they were great, although it was a little awkward when Ms Hoffs had to do Eternal Flame, as due to Bangles related reasons she didn't want to do it. However, she did do it, although Debbie had to help her, so it was good to see some old fashioned professionalism. The girl who was screaming for "IN YOUR ROOM!" all night got mixed up on the way to a Toni Pearen concert (not really, but ya know). Luckily, Mrs Kim from the Gilmore Girls has shoehorned me into a corner of a little Internet cafe jammed right up against the dodgy boxes, so in a raid, I'm probably in danger of being carted off as evidence. I'm struggling today, not from drinking, but because everywhere I've gone has had some severe sales pressure in every single shop. Not least of all Rebel Sports, where picking up a Melbourne Victory top to have a look at the price has been akin to being Ronnie Biggs. Oh well, at the Bangles concert, God served me up another kid in a wheelchair to make me reflect on my life (thanks again Jeebus) - and even though I was distinctly left wing and right on and unhappy to be at a casino owned and promoted by a multi national corporation and a government that profits on the failings of others (sister), the good news is, I won twenty bucks on a blackjack table so...um...don't...er...oh well, the woman who was penning me into this tiny seat has just left, so I can breathe again, so that's muted my moral outrage...now if someone could just take away these boxes (security)...

However, what I want to write about today is someone else at the concert, Sophie, the back up guitarist for Monique Brumby (who I always, always get mixed up with Deborah Conway - you never see them together), the support Bangle. Sophie was extremely young, extremely attractive, and yet, completely in the wrong band. Deb..sorry, Monique, isn't the rock chick that Sophie should be supporting, as she continually went to rock out with her guitar, coming to the front of the strage to rock out with her fender thrust forward, only for Monique to tone it down and then sort of go off on a folky bleh styling, leaving Sophie to strum alone and go back to her vodka with a slight air of discontented melancholy. Luckily for Sophie, she's still quite young, and go into another direction, but she did make me think about doing a job that you don't want to do, and doing your best, something I palably fail to do on a daily basis, but she was able to do quite drunkenly well. I'm not a good worker, and there's that sort of thing in your head about "oh why do a job you hate!" but it's easy and you don't work weekends, and if you can just get through the day without too many angry people, it's...well, it's still terrible, but you cope as best you can. We had a girl at work who couldn't do that though, she had a massive nervous breakdown in our lunch room. Me, sympathetic to the end, was mostly concerned that she cried on my Herald Sun, but the reason for her crying was that she couldn't get her name badge on. She tried and tried, and couldn't work out the complicated physical principles of magnet to cloth, and in the end threw her badge across the room, almost hitting a kid on the way out, and then we found her in the lunch room, staring blankly at a piece of tomato in her sandwich, and muttering something about all the people who wouldn't stop coming in...still, she was professional in one sense, her sandwich was very, very, very neatly cut, which I'm not suggesting was some kind of psychotic sign, some people just like their sandwiches in incredibly isometric triangles all of precisely the same length and style....

However, there was also a sort of showbusiness logic to Sophies choices (nice) of band to join - good experience and all that, and at least she can improve her station in life. There's a minorly well known actress down here in Tasmania who I won't mention - she's the kind of person you see third billed in a playhouse theatre remake of a saucy farce, you know the kind - who I went to school with. I was in her drama class, and because I was reasonably good at improvising things (that is, I could do all the work) she was always seeking me out for her group. She would tell me that she was studying drama quite intensely and she was working hard on her own script. I found that quite inspirational her passion, and sometimes it almost rubbed off on my nervous, adolescent teenage self, almost inspiring me to sit down and try and write something on my little 1994 IBM computer with it's warp processing speed and Sensible soccer game loaded on, ready to play. She was a method actress - whatever she was required to play, she would methodically ruin it, but still, she was intense and committed to improving. Then, when I moved to Hobart, I saw the quality of plays she was in, and thought, well, I'm sure it's just a matter of her waiting for her big break, she has a dream, at least she's doing what she loves...that was, until I was sitting at a Grand Final luncheon, and out came a series of actresses, dressed as different things, and there she was, dressed as a big baby to symbolise someone spitting the dummy as a player had that year...as she announced to everyone that she was a widdle baby, I'm sure she clocked me, I'm sure she knew who I was, but she never broke character, she focused on what she had to, but there was no doubting that her moment had passed...and so had her dignity, as she had to sit on the panellists knees...a skill I'm sure they teach endlessly in the Stanislavsky method...

Of course, showbusiness is a cruel and fickle game - the number of bewildered, bedraggled and confused singers, buskers, and performers I've seen demean themselves across the world has long confused me - why do it? I know it's a living, but I kind of admire their dedication. When I was growing up in Penguin, we had all manner of people wander through the school, singing, performing, being the Wilderness society bear, and not one of them let their standards slip...except one...in about, oh, 1986 (we didn't have no Internet...) the biggest and best thing you could possibly own was a Coca Cola gold Yo-Yo. You got this by being part of the duped corporate masses (I've read too much Naomi Klein) and sending in 12 tokens from Coca Cola cans. Now, in spite of the seeming random nature of this dispersement of yo-yos, it still seemed to fall to the cooler kids to have the right to own these yo-yos (and me, since my Mum generally was quite a dedicated collector of tokens) and we would spend literally minutes a day perfecting tricks like round the world and walk the dog and the really popular trick of yo-yo goes down to the ground then back up to your hand - one day though, we were visited by the Coca Cola Yo-Yo trick team - now, there is a very good chance I've exaggerated this story in my head, that they weren't actually Americans or anything, and just a random bunch of bogans from Natone who were scouted Jim Henson style from the school playground, but in my head, they were Americans, world champions and were going to show us how to rock, yo-yo style...at least, that was the plan, and in fact what happened was about ten seconds in, one of the guys tried to do an around the world, which involves making the yo-yo go in a circle, and absolutely conked himself in the head with it. It made a seriously dull thud, and it definitely rattled him, and he was unable to continue to the high standards of the team...it might be an urban legend, but some say if you listen really closely, you can still hear his plaintive, haunting cry across the primary school playground..."Oh me fucking head..."...cascading over the hills with a beautiful clarity...

Dignity, professionalism, class and beauty...Susannah Hoffs, you have so much to teach us...and the yo-yo community...